Patients requiring artificial ventilation are generally connected to lung ventilators that cyclically deliver volumes of a mixture of air and oxygen by means of positive pressure. Some lung ventilators may be designed to treat patients from neonates to adults, both in invasive and noninvasive ventilation configurations.
Nasal CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) is a therapy for neonatal patients where the neonatal patient is non-invasively connected to a ventilator using a nasal prong and breaths spontaneously at a continuous positive airway pressure. Unlike invasive ventilation, it is not usual in this nasal CPAP scenario to monitor volume due to large leaks observed in the inspired volume by the patient. In contrast, the patient respiratory breathing presents a small fluctuation of pressure and, therefore, operators prefer to monitor the pressure in such a case.